


Afternoon at the castle

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [316]
Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:19:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29877606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: Blaine, Leo and the kids are visiting Vince's farm in Italy. Vince proposes a little road trip to the Castle of Montebello, beautiful historical site and famous setting of a local ghost story.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Original Male Character(s), Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Leoverse [316]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541
Kudos: 1





	Afternoon at the castle

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING** : This story is a **spin-off sequel** for Broken Heart Syndrome. This means that, despite not being properly set after BHS (but that's only because BHS is probably never going to have a proper ending and we'll keep talking about these people forever), it depicts things happening way late in the 'verse, and that may be on varying degrees of spoiler.
> 
> Written for: Lande di Fandom's COW-T #11 (Week 4 - M7)  
> prompt: They gave us 20 prompts to choose from. I chose all 20, because I'm petty like that:  
> gas, free fall, ghost, general, glory, iguana, insomnia, half-truth, lullaby, obsession, overdose, paranoia, rage, country lane, sunset, last word, doom and gloom, hurricane, green with envy, sapphire

They have been in Italy for less than a week – and planning to stay for another three – when Vince proposes a little road trip to the Castle of Montebello, beautiful historical site and famous setting of a local **ghost** story. It is an easy two and half hour ride from Vince's farm and a fun thing to do together with kids the twins' age and with teenagers.

It sounds like a great idea, at first. Blaine could use a little drive in the Tuscan hills and Leo gets really excited both at the idea of visiting a true haunted castle and to go anywhere with Cody – conveniently forgetting Cody's husband who actually had the idea – but they are Americans and they have no idea. They picture this short trip like an easy ride on mostly empty side roads, not the hell of hairpin bends that it really is.

Still clueless and blissfully unaware of what's ahead, they follow Vince's car into a **gas** station down the road, which is actually their first stop because, according to Vince's ominous words, it's not certain they will find another working one along the road. The place is manned, so Vince takes over the task of asking the man there to put gas in both their cars, since neither Blaine nor Leo speaks enough Italian to do that by themselves.

Allergic to long _and_ short waits, especially in the car, Logan asks to be released from the horrible contraption they always put him in during car rides – it's pointless to explain to him that his baby car seat is the only thing that would prevent him from flying through the windshield – and his older brother merciful decides to bring him to the shop inside to distract him.

Kathy, Harper's plush **iguana** , chooses that precise moment to peek over Leo's seat. “Hello,” she says politely in Harper's high-pitched voice.

Kathy is grandpa Dave's latest gift and Harper's latest favorite toy, which means she goes everywhere with it. Kathy even unseated Barbie from her historical first place and gained her rightful place on the flight to Italy. You leave the girl a couple hours with Kurt, she comes back with a new Burberry coat. You leave her with Dave, she comes back with the ultimate toy iguana. That is Leo's dads in a nutshell.

“Hello Kathy,” Leo turns to look at the green plush and the improbable pink bonnet Harper thought was just _perfectly splendid_ for her. “Are you excited for the trip?”

“Yes!” Harper speaks in her iguana voice. “But I think I am a little tired, dad.”

Leo – suddenly father of three _and_ an iguana – rolls his eyes because he perfectly knows where this is going. It has been his personal nightmare for the past few months, but he was the one who started it, so he's got no one else to blame. He made his bed, as they say, and now he lies in it.

“Why don't you sleep a little, Kathy?”  
“But I can't sleep without my **lullaby**!” Harper says, on cue. She places the iguana on her father's shoulder and then proceeds to give him kisses with it. “Pretty please, can you sing it for me?”

It was a dark and stormy night when _You magnificent reptile_ came into being and now Leo is stuck with it like that one stupid movie that will forever haunt the career of a multi-Oscar winning actor. He composed the song especially for Harper one night because she couldn't fall asleep, and now she asks him to sing it in the most random places, more often than not in public. Not that Leo has any problem singing anything in front of anyone – this is one of his best parent qualities– but he would like to change the repertoire once in a while.

“Alright, princess, but you sing it with me this time,” he proposes.

“Okay,” she nods with excessive enthusiasm, her curly pigtails flying up and down.

Father and daughter are right in the middle of the second and last verse – _You magnificent reptile, smarter than the crocodile_ – when Blaine comes back to the car, after assisting in perfect silence to Vince's animated conversation with the gas man, who apparently is a friend of his. Blaine is fairly sure they talked about food, because the world _lasagna_ was thrown around a few times.

Finding himself in the middle of a concert, Blaine does the only sensible thing and joins in, and by the time Timmy and Logan are back too, they are all signing _Oh, iguana, not a peep, go to sleep, sleep, sleep._. “I swear, I always wonder about you,” Timmy sighs with disbelief and disappointment as he helps his little brother back on the baby seat. “But these are the times I wonder the most. The whole gas station was looking at you.”

“So what?” Leo shrugs. He has danced in the middle of the breakfast aisle at Target once, complete with a complicated cart choreography, just to make Logan laugh, so people listening to him singing in his own car don't scare him. “Little Bear, what are you eating?”

Logan looks up at him as he unapologetically stuffs his face with a candy bar. “Chocolate,” he answers while still chewing on it. He's got one in each of his hands and many other in his lap.

“We found those candy bars he likes,” Timmy explains. “Alex says they are really common here.”

“And you bought him twenty?” Leo asks in shock. Timmy is usually so very responsible that sometimes they forget he is a sixteen years old.

Timmy shrugs. “I am not his father,” he says with a smirk. “Cool big brothers can do that.”

“Cool big _bother_!” Logan says, with misled enthusiasm.

“Yes, he surely is a bother,” Leo snorts. But the afternoon is long and full of promises, and also they are on holiday in a beautiful place, so he decides not to get mad.

Unfortunately that happens anyway some twenty minutes later, because you can try and take Leo away from anger but you can't really take anger away from him, especially when he's doing something pleasant and the world around him, in the form of two small human beings he contributed making, does everything in its power to disrupt his moment of joy.

They have been driving for a while, following Vince's gray Qashquai as it moves nonchalantly through the tiniest roads they've ever seen, and the ride is going fairly well, all considering. Timmy stuck his earbuds in his ears and disconnected from the rest of the family the moment Blaine turned on the engine and Leo is easily engaged in conversation with his husband – making plans to have dinner in Florence next week, just the two of them – while simultaneously exchanging texts with Cody.

Blaine doesn't think that strange because he's used, by now, to the way Leo and Cody deals with each other whenever they are in close proximity. They are constantly talking to each other, moving around each other and, Blaine is pretty sure of that, they would be all over each other if they didn't retain that minimum of shame. He's probably the only one who finds extremely funny the way they try to act sensibly and fail miserably, but maybe that is just the way he is.

Anyway, this moment of pure bliss for everybody doesn't last long as no any good thing does, after all. The twins are used to long drives, but it doesn't mean they like them. In fact, they don't and after giving their parents twenty minutes of peace, they decide they did enough and they start bothering each other. It starts with small normal things – a push, a shove, Kathy being pulled left and right, Harper hitting her brother on his head because he's singing too loud – but then it turns into twins warfare.

Like any other children, twins can be annoying to their parents and siblings but they have an added skill, stemmed by their sharing a womb for nine months. They know with sniper precision how to get under their twin's skin in the most efficient and devastating way. Minimum effort, maximum result. Harper, for example, knows that her brother Logan will put up with everything – hidden toys, mocking, even slapping – but he will go absolutely mental if she messes with his building bricks. Harper never goes near Logan's LEGO creations unless she wants him to infuriate him. Breaking a bricks tower is always a deliberate declaration of war.

Logan, on the other hand, is never annoying with his sister – he sees her as a beacon of pure and glorious light – but when he does, he always goes for the kill. Harper conducts herself like a princess and she likes everything to be perfect around her. She likes her personal space to be left unbothered and in mint conditions like she has arranged it. So, if Logan wants to infuriate her, the only thing he has to do is put a finger on her baby car seat. Just that. 

He places a finger, or maybe a hand, nonchalantly. Possibly he leans on her side of the car, pretending to do another thing entirely. She pushes him away once, twice, and then three times. And ever time Logan complies, except that he goes back doing the same thing over and over. Just a finger. Just a hand. And after a while she loses all her princess attitude and she goes berserk.

She calls for her fathers to help and they ask Logan to stop, and he stops for a while, just long enough for Blaine and Leo not to watch him anymore, then he starts again. So Harper starts crying – a desperate, inconsolable, grow metal-worthy cry – that turns his face red and makes her close her fists and start punching his brother in the head. It's not even annoyance anymore. It's frustration, it is pure, unadulterated **rage**. She can hear nothing, she can see nothing except his mortal enemy and the war he waged upon her.

After fifteen minutes of this madness, which neither of his fathers seems able to put an end on, even Timmy gives up. He usually a saint, ready to deal with any tantrum, never complaining for any crying or screaming while he's doing homework, but the idea of getting trapped in a car with two screaming monkeys for another two hours is too much even for him. “Stop the car,” he demands.

“What?” Blaine asks confused as he winces at Harper's piercing screams. “Baby girl, can you not?”

“I said stop the car,” Timmy repeats, and his voice is so firm that he can't be ignore anymore. “I'm riding with Vince.”

Blaine looks around. They're currently on what he can only describe like a two-way muletrack with a small brick wall on either side of it and he just lived a nightmare when a few miles ago, a car came the other way and he had no the faintest idea how they were both going to pass. “Where am I supposed to stop, Timothy?” He says, a little irritation in his voice.

As on cue, Leo's phone rings and it's Cody's voice on the other side. “Alex tells me the twins are having a small meltdown” he chuckles, apparently Leo and him are not the only one texting. “We have a safe space for Timmy. Just follow Vince to the **country lane** , we can make the swap there. I just sounded like a drug lord, didn't I?”

“You could never sound like a drug lord,” Leo chuckles, closing the call. “Cody says to follow Vince to the country lane.”

“Aren't we already on it?” Blaine asks, in shock. The image of an even smaller and more dangerous road for some reason crammed with sheep fills his mind with horror.

Apparently, in Italy, provincial roads look like country lanes but they are not, in fact, country lanes. Real country lanes are, if possible, smaller and look like pathways in the deep of the woods, something a car should never be expected to go. Blaine follows Vince's leads and he finds the country lane only because Vince suddenly turns right, through a pause in the brick wall that God only knows how he saw. They end up on this tiny, almost invisible trail, overrun by weeds and leading, presumably, to someone's farm.

Timmy opens the door and throws himself out of the car the moment it stops. Judging by the way he slams the door shut, he doesn't want to see them all ever again. “Everything's alright?” Vince asks.

The sudden and unexpected rally race has caught the twins off guard and put an end to their fight, so Blaine feels like nodding to him. “Yes, boredom and close quarters is a bad mix,” he says.

“We're almost there.”

As they reverse and get back to the main road, Blaine knows he has to find a way to turn the twins' **doom and gloom** into happiness again or this road trip is not going to end well. Also because he can feel Leo's mood already deteriorating – anything not going exactly as planned tends to do that, Harper definitely took after him – and if there's something he fears more than the twins throwing a tantrum, it is Leo doing the same.

“Let's play a game!” He proposes, showing himself so excited about it that the kids can't do anything but being excited as well. 

“Guess the word!” They both say at the same time.

They started playing this game when they started talking and for a couple of years it has been very slow and very frustrating because Blaine and Leo had a very hard time understanding the clues. Now it is slightly better – the children are articulate enough to form actual sentences – but it's still not very entertaining because they always think of things they can see around them.

It works like a charm, though, because they're so busy finding new words that they forget to hate on each other and peace comes back to the car. Blaine can drive more than an hour without so much as as a “lower your voice, please”. Between Leo and him they guess iguana (twice), chocolate, car, dad, daddy, Timmy, cow, piggy and an unexpectedly difficult New York kitchen, referring to the kitchen of Blaine's loft, which they have seen only three times in their life.

Having played his fair shares of the game – meaning, he had enough after more than an our – and seeing that the twins are happy again, Leo decides it's time for the last round. “Alright, **last word** ,” he says. “My turn.”

“Is it a thing?” Harper asks.

“Yes, but not exactly an object.”

“Is it big?” Logan asks.

Leo nods. “Definitely.”

“Is it an everyday thing?” Blaine asks, curiously.

“Luckily not.”

“Is it scary?”

Leo looks at Logan. “Sometimes it is—Well, yeah, most of the times.”

“It's a storm!” Logan says immediately. He's scared of ever remotely resembling a storm, which to him also means heavy rain.”

“Mh, no,” Leo chuckles.

“Is it bigger than a storm?” Logan inquires further.

“I think so, yes.”

“Is there water?” Harper asks.

“A lot of it,” Leo confirms.

“It's a waterfall!” Logan says triumphantly.

“A waterfall is _not_ bigger than a storm, Logan!” Harper hisses.

“Is it a meteorology phenomena?” Blaine butts in.

“What's a _metollogy phenomenal_?” Logan asks, confused.

“The weather, cookie. Like sunny, or rainy,” Leo explains. “And yes, it is.”

“Ah! I think I know then,” Blaine smiles, smugly. “Can I say it?”

“What is it? What is it?” The twins ask.

“It's a **hurricane** , dad's favorite natural disaster,” Blaine chuckles. Leo has a favorite everything – animal, dinosaur, movie, song, you name it – and they are all go-to for him in games like these. He is a bit like a five years old too. “What did I win?”

“A kiss,” Leo says and he gives it to him, totally expecting the twins to make happily disgusted sounds.

It's about four in the afternoon when they finally arrive at the castle, right on time despite their little misadventures. Once inside, Vince instantly takes upon himself the task of illustrating the legend of Azzurina, resident ghost of the Montebello Castle. It is so obvious that this mountain of a man is dying to tell this story. He has been waiting patiently for hours and now he won't wait a second more. The moment they're one step past the entrance gate, he gathers the kids to him – the twins, the teenagers and also some random children who don't belong to them but, like anybody who ever saw Vince once in their life, seem very interested in the big man talking – and he starts explaining the legend in every detail.

“Once upon a time, this castle belonged to a **general** named Uguccione,” Vince speaks English to the benefit of the twins and Timmy, but he gets some Italian word here and there to keep the rest of his much larger Italian audience interested. “Uguccione had a daughter named Guendalina, but everybody called her Azzurrina, which means Little Blue, because of her hair.”

“She had blue hair?” Harper asks, her eyes sparkling at the mere idea.

“Actually, she had white hair, but that scared people back then, because nobody knew that you could be born with white hair,” Vince promptly explains. “So, to protect her, her mother would dye her hair black like yours. But the dye came always off badly, leaving it blue. Also to protect her, his father never let her leave the castle, so she would be stuck here all the time with two guards.”

“Poor Azzurrina, all alone in her multi-million castle, waited on hand and foot by an army of servants,” Alex comments, sarcastically. “It must have been horrible.”

“It wasn't,” Vince says, totally unperturbed by his son's adolescence rearing its head through sassyness, “but it soon turned so. On June 21st 1375, while her father was away, seeking **glory** on the battlefield, Azzurrina was playing with her ball inside the castle, while the storm raged outside. At some point, the guards heard her scream but when they went to look for her, she wasn't there anymore. Her body was never to be found again. Legend has it that she died, but never left the castle and that if you look closely, you can still see her ghost walking the halls.”

Harper takes a hesitant step back, while her brother is not ashamed of running and hide behind Blaine. “I don't like this story,” he whines.

“Don't worry, Logan, she's not a bad ghost,” Vince smiles at him. “She's very friendly and she likes to make friends.”

“Right. She must be very sad here all alone,” Blaine agrees. “We should find her and say hi, don't you think?”

“How can we find her?” Harper asks. She doesn't _look_ convinced by the whole ghost idea, but there is nothing Blaine could say that she wouldn't believe, so she's willing to give it a chance.

“I say we split into groups,” Blaine proposes. “The boys—alright, they already started.”

Timmy and Alex are walking away as quick as they can, determined to stay as far as possible from family activities, but they _look_ like they're playing along, and that is enough for Blaine.

“Leo and Cody, you are the second team,” Blaine smiles at his husband and for a moment Leo can't hear anything, his brain stuck on the first two names in the sentence. “Me and Vince, we're going with the twins.”

Husbands and kids are gone before Leo can even make sense of what just happened. He knows – because he knows Blaine like the back of his hand – that his husband put them together on purpose. And while he knows perfectly well why he did it – Blaine is an awesome husband – he has no idea how to repay him for such a thing. A normal person would think about a lot of kinky sex, but that's just Friday for them. Maybe Leo will have to have dinner with Blaine in a fancy restaurant. 

He shivers in horror. He can already feel the tie strangling him.

“Just because it's you,” Sweets,” Leo mutters as he grabs Cody's hand and drags him along. “Nobody else is worth the torture of a night at _Le Trésor_.”

“What?” Cody stumbles a few times and then he catches up with him. “What are you talking about?”

Leo shakes his head and smiles at him. “Nothing, don't worry. So, are you ready to find this child ghost?”

“Mh. I don't know, do you want to?”

Leo's smile turns into a smirk. “It might be scary and you are very cute when you are scared.”

Cody looks down and blushes. Leo always talks like absolutely no time had passed from the last time he could be reasonably talking about him like that, and the worst part is that Cody doesn't mind at all. “That's not true,” he whispers.

“That you are scared or that you're cute?” They are inside the castle now, walking randomly around and he hasn't let go of his hand yet. Cody doesn't want him to. “I think they are both fundamental truths.”

“Leo...” Cody sighs, but he leans on him, hitting his shoulder lightly. “You shouldn't say those things.”

“What? I'm not doing anything! Besides, this tryst has my husband's blessing,” he jokes again.

“But not mine!” Cody chuckles, and then yawns.

Leo's face falls. “I'm boring you now?” He says, tragically. Cody is almost sure he's still joking, but you never know with him. “Is that what we have become? A pair of former lovers who know each other so well that they got bored at each other?”

“No! No!” Leo's utterly devastated expression is too funny not to at least chuckle. He's so sure – rightfully so – that Cody adores him that when something is not exactly shiny proof of that, he panics. “I'm just very tired. I haven't been sleeping much, lately.”

“Why?”

Cody shrugs and looks anywhere but him for a moment, then he allows himself to look up into Leo's dark blue eyes. “Because I'm excited that you're all here,” he says, but it's not the whole truth. What really keeps him awake at night is the thought of Leo a few doors down the hall from his own bedroom, the fact that it's easy to forget Blaine is there too and imagine to slip under the covers with him, remembering exactly how that would feel and what would happen after that.

But there are things he can't really say out loud, not even with the free pass they have been given by at least one of their husbands.

It's not exactly lying, though, if he knows Leo can always read through his **half-truths** , right?

Two things Leo has always been with him: honest and unapologetic. He always says what he wants – even if he has no right to it – and he is never ashamed of it. He was like that in college, when he would randomly look up from his book and say _I'm dying to have sex with you_ , and he is like that now.

“You are my **obsession** too,” he murmurs, showing that he knows perfectly well the reason of Cody's **insomnia** , because the same desire that pushes Cody to daydream in bed, also pushes him in some other way. “But you already know that, right?”

Cody knows he should take a step back, but instead he takes one forward. They both always do the contrary of what they should. “Leo...”

“I always dream about you,” Leo goes on, reaching out to comb a lock of Cody's hair behind his ear. “And that is the easy part because I can do things to you in my dreams. I don't have to control myself. And then I see you, in the morning, and I feel like doing those things for real, but I can't. Every time you pass me by, I would like to reach out and grab you, hold you until you lean in to me like you used to do.”

Cody licks his suddenly dry lips and he stops resisting to whatever force was preventing him to move further. He rests his head against Leo's chest and exhales. “You really, really shouldn't speak these things.”

“I would kiss you under your earlobe, like this.” Cody can't believe Leo will really do it, but then he feels his warm lips on his skin. “Do you remember when I would do that in bed?”

Cody nods and closes his eyes, giving himself the courage to say “I always knew what you wanted when you did that.”

“That wasn't hard, was it?” Leo chuckles, rubbing his nose against his cheek. “I was crazy for you, I always wanted the same thing. I still do.”

The light of the **sunset** coming in through the window is painting the room a delicate shade of orange and pink but they don't notice. They are lost in their own little world, where the borders are their memories and nothing else matters but their proximity to each other. Leo's eyes get darker with desire and, this time, Cody doesn't look away. He wants that longing for himself, he wants the attention, he wants the love – or whatever that is that Leo is allowed to give him – he wants everything he can get right now.

Cody would let Leo kiss him, he would kiss him back, but something moves in the corner of his eyes and he gets distracted. It's not the movement, though, it's the feeling connected to it – the uneasiness and the cold – that makes him look up and consequently whimper.

Leo frowns with concern. “What's wrong?” And then his brain makes the wrong connection – the only one it can do in such a situation – and he looks sad. “You don't want to?”

“No, it's not that, it's just—“ Cody mumbles, eyes staring right behind Leo, terrified. “It's...”

Confused, Leo follows his gaze and finally he sees it, crossing the corridor just before their eyes, Azzurrina's ghost. She's just an impression of fluorescent blue light, but they can make out the shape of a little girl holding a ball. She doesn't look their way. She just hovers for a moment in the space of the door and then she moves on. 

For a very long time they remain silent, still holding each other, too shocked to speak a single word. They are both pretty sure of what just happened, but they hesitate to say it aloud. “Did we saw what I think we saw?” Leo speaks first, eyes still aimed at the door. He's both excited _and_ scared to death at the idea of seeing that thing again.

“Was it—Was it her?”

Leo clears his throat, trying to regain some impression of composure. “Ghosts don't exist, right?”

“That one seemed real,” Cody comments, his voice trembling.

They remain silent some more, maybe waiting for something to happen, possibly something less upsetting than that. The kiss that was about to happen is easily forgotten. This isolated room that seemed so perfect for them just a moment ago now gives Leo the creeps. And despite being still completely plunged in pink light, it looks sinister for the mere fact that there was _something_ on the door before.

“We should go,” Leo says, eventually. 

“We have to go the same way she went, though.”

Leo really takes into consideration the idea of sitting down in a corner and call Blaine to come and pick him up, but then he realizes that that, more than the almost kiss, could really push Blaine to hospitalize him for good. So he takes a deep breath, grabs Cody's hand and, showing a great deal of bravery, marches forward towards the door. As they are about to turn right, he almost expects the ghost to jump at them – suddenly ugly, scary and clearly demonic, like ghosts do in every horror movie ever produced – but nothing happens. After the door there's a corridor, exactly like they have left it.

Everything looks the same, and yet every shadow seems to hide a ghost child in search of a playmate that will stay with her _forever_. Every little sound seems an infant laugh. Every distant pat on the wall, her tiny fist knocking or her tiny feet following them. Last time Leo experienced such **paranoia** he was very high and he hadn't slept in days. Once he came down from the worst thing he had ever taken – something that had escaped River's strict control – he promised himself he was never going to be that high again.

He couldn't imagine that more than twenty years later he was going to have lucid nightmares while sober.

“Are you alright?” He checks in with Cody just to distract himself from the horrible feeling that something – possibly a much taller, scarier and somewhat hovering Azzurrina – is right behind them.

“Let's just get out of here.”

“I couldn't agree more.”

They are almost at the end of the corridor – finally safe and close to people again – when a high-pitched scream rips through the air, freezing Leo's blood in his veins. “This is Harper,” he says worried.

He forgets ghost and fear and he starts running, dragging Cody along. When they get outside on the tower again, they find Blaine looking over the railing and Logan crying his head off a few feet from him, red in the face. For an horrific moment Leo thinks his daughter fell. “What happened?” He almost screams too. “Where's Harper?”

Blaine steps aside to reveal their daughter, who is now sobbing quietly after screaming bloody murder. “We had a problem,” Blaine looks like he had a rough ten minutes. “We went to the souvenir shop while you were away. I bought Harper this little **sapphire** -looking pendant, a trinket of sort. I asked Logan if he wanted something but he said no several times. He seemed content with the candy bars. And then I turned my back one second and they started fighting. As far as I understand, Logan was suddenly **green with envy** for the necklace. I asked for a better explanation, but they were just screaming so I gave up understanding. Anyway, he grabbed Kathy and threw her over the railing.”

“What?” Leo looks at him in shock. Twins are no strangers to tantrums, but this sounds a little bit extreme even for them.

Blaine shrugs. He can almost always understand what's going on in his kids' minds, but sometimes even he has to admit defeat. “I don't know, love, maybe he is tired. Or maybe that pendant is more fascinating than it looks to our grown-up eyes.”

Leo looks at the little sapphire dangling from Harper's neck. It's nothing more than a toy jewel, a replica of the sapphire Azzurrina's wearing in the only existing painting of her. Harper has tons of things like that at home and Logan has never wanted anything to do with them. But Leo doesn't think it's about the pendant at all. He probably just regretted saying no to Blaine in the souvenir shop, and instead of asking for something too, he just flipped out.

“Can we retrieve the iguana?” Leo asks, looking over the railing. Kathy took a **free fall** down the tower and landed in an inner courtyard. Leo looks at her sprawled green body and sighs. She looks intact, but the bonnet is gone. Luckily it's just a six feet drop, but they still need to understand how to access the courtyard. “How do we get in there?”

“Vince went to fetch one of the tour guides,” Blaine says.

“I can get there,” Timmy shrugs, giving his phone and his earbuds to Alex for safekeeping. And before anybody has the time to stop him, he steps over the railing and he starts free climbing down the side of a medieval castle.

“I don't think that's—“ Alex eyes grow suddenly huge. “I can't believe it. Is he for real?”

Blaine and Leo look at the scene in horror. “Be careful, son!” Blaine calls, trying to sound perfectly calm, but Leo can hear the little crack in his voice as he murmurs. “He's going to fall.”

“If he doesn't get arrested first,” Alex comments dryly. “This is not a theme park, you know? He can't just show off his perfect body by damaging historical sites and be awarded a medal for that.”

But Timmy is agile and pretty confident, and despite the half heart attack he gave his fathers, he lands in the courtyard five minutes later. “She's safe!” He calls, holding Kathy. “I'm coming up.”

“Please be careful!” Blaine says again, the hysterics in his voice stronger than before.

By the time Vince comes back with a tour guide, Timmy is back with his feet on the ground and Kathy is back in Harper's arms. Logan, calm again and visibly mortified, gets closer to her. Leo is ready to stop them if they start fighting, but she grabs her brother and pulls him into a tight hug, following the mysterious logic of twins.

“I'd say it is time to go,” Blaine says, gently pushing his husband and his children towards the exit. It seems appropriate since, apparently, Alex was right and free climbing towers is illegal in Italy. The guide seems furious and, judging by the way she waves her hands, Leo supposes she's ready to call the police.

They all get in the cars and leave before she can do that.

As they make their way back towards the farm, Leo starts to relax. He can already feel the long hot shower he's going to have, and then maybe they will go out for dinner in some little restaurant hidden in the hills where the food is glorious and the menu is handwritten on random pieces of spare paper. Or even better, they will order pizza at home from that _pizzeria_ Cody always rambles about.

Leo is dreaming an army of Margherita pizzas when Logan murmurs, “I don't feel very well,” right before vomiting an entire afternoon of chocolate candy bars.

They spend the rest of the ride in silence, paying the price of Logan's **overdose** , because what is there to say that is not blasphemy at that point?


End file.
